


Mixtape

by sunlightsymphony



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Developing Relationship, Fluff, Humor, Introspection, M/M, Music, ill-advised monthiversary gifts, lots of feelings, not season 6 compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:21:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22167067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunlightsymphony/pseuds/sunlightsymphony
Summary: For their second monthiversary, Patrick gives David a mix CD.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 29
Kudos: 148





	Mixtape

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was loosely inspired by the song "Mixtape" by Tift Merritt. 
> 
> I owe a million thank-yous to didipickles for beta services above and beyond the call of duty! Your advice made this story so much better than it would have been otherwise. 
> 
> I've elected to pretend that Season 6 airs at 9 p.m. EST everywhere, and therefore I'm sneaking this story in just under the wire. Regardless of my delusions, this is not S6 compliant.

On their two-month anniversary, David shoulders through the store doors with coffee and tea in hand. Patrick is futzing with something on the counter; his head jerks up at the sound of the bell. 

“Good morning, David!” Patrick says. He reaches for the tea, but David leans away suspiciously. Patrick’s grin is at least two sizes too big for tea. 

“What is that?” David demands, looking from Patrick’s face to the slender square package in front of him. The wrapping paper is covered in a rainbow of musical notes.

“If you open it, you might find out,” Patrick says blandly.

So David rips apart the wrapping, only to find a – fucking _mix CD_ inside. 

For a moment he just gapes at it, speechless. 

When David’s brain starts working again, it reminds him that Patrick’s one-monthiversary “gift” to him was actually a prank that involved Stevie, a delivery of artisanal cheeses, and a remote-controlled helicopter. Logically, this latest present must be as insincere as the last one. So David has no obligation to protect Patrick’s hypothetical tender feelings.

“Okay,” he starts, flinging his hands in the air, “this may very well be the most incorrect thing you’ve ever done.”

David launches into a comprehensive list of objections, complete with pacing and circular gestures. He begins with the indie folk tendencies of the track listing (“Half of these songs are about plant life, Patrick!”). From there, he segues into the implication that he owns a CD player (“Is this the 90s? Am I wearing _JNCO jeans_ suddenly?”). 

Patrick calmly sips his tea while David reads him the riot act, but his twitching mouth and dancing eyes speak volumes.

By the time David moves on to Patrick’s misuse of his copic markers to create the cover art, he’s wound up tight and feeling genuinely annoyed. “I didn’t pay twelve dollars apiece for my boyfriend to reduce these to glorified gel pens!” he exclaims. He hears his own voice rise precipitously on ‘boyfriend.’ 

Patrick sets his tea aside as David waves one of the markers in his face for emphasis. Then he catches David’s wrist and tugs him into a kiss. 

David’s free arm wraps around Patrick’s shoulders instinctively; should it be instinctive, after two months? He doesn’t know. The brush of Patrick’s tongue against his lips is making him forget all his arguments.

“I’ll replace the markers,” Patrick murmurs, when they pull apart to breathe. He’s holding David’s wrist between them, so that David’s fist is pressed to his own chest, still clutching the stupid marker. He can feel Patrick’s heartbeat pounding against his knuckles. 

“You can – buy me new ink refills,” David says, dazed. “Isn’t that a write-off?”

From this close, he can see Patrick’s pupils dilate. He takes David’s mouth so ardently that David stumbles backward and almost collides with a display of succulents. 

Patrick steadies them both with a hand on David’s jaw. His lips are warm and soft, a heady caress against David’s lips, his chin, his cheek. When David can’t help nuzzling into it, Patrick hums and tilts his face into the scrape of David’s stubble like a cat.

The combined sensations wash through David in a warm cascade: the pressure of Patrick’s chest leaning up into him; the subtle spice of Patrick’s cologne in his nose; the heat of Patrick’s palm fading from his cheek to rekindle in the small of his back, as Patrick slips his hand under the hem of David’s sweater and strokes it up his spine; the firm muscle of Patrick’s shoulder where David is gripping it spasmodically –

The sound of the shop bell is like a bucket of ice water.

“Slow day at the office?” Ronnie drawls, from the doorway.

David frantically tugs down his sweater while Patrick deals with Ronnie. She definitely caught an eyeful of his left hip just now. It’s his better side, but still.

And in case he wasn’t feeling exposed enough, the mix CD is still lying out on the counter in all its Technicolor glory. He shoves it hastily under the register.

David’s sole consolation is his view of the delicious flush that’s spreading up the nape of Patrick’s neck. The longer he babbles nervously at Ronnie, the more Ronnie looks at him like he’s a bad stand-up act and she’s holding a bag of tomatoes… which she is. (And who knows what else she might have glimpsed through the store window while she was selecting them? This is why they agreed that beneath-clothes touching would be strictly limited to the stock room.)

At last, Ronnie laughs abruptly and turns away from Patrick to start browsing through the skin care products. Patrick slinks back to David’s side. “As your business manager,” he mutters, “I think I should be the only one using that type of jargon in the workplace.”

“Stop trying to explain the jargon to me, then,” David hisses back. Inside, he’s preening; Patrick hasn’t been this easy to fluster since Stevie lent them her apartment for the night.

By the time Ronnie checks out, someone else has entered the store. A steady stream of customers keeps them occupied for the rest of the day. David luxuriates in their popularity, even as he shoots Patrick hot little looks across the room. 

He’s planning to revisit their make-out session after they close up, but Patrick has a meeting with his hiking club. Why a stroll through the woods needs prior planning, David would love to know.

“Contingencies,” Patrick says.

“Contingencies for what?”

“The unexpected.” And he’s out the door before David has time to kiss that infuriating smirk right off his face.

On his walk home, David holds the CD case gingerly between his fingertips. He thinks back to Patrick’s teasing grin, his hungry kisses, and tries to reassure himself that all signs are still pointing to “joke.” 

David heads straight to the love room when he arrives at the motel. He can’t stomach throwing away a gift from Patrick, not even a troll gift. But the idea of anyone else seeing it ( _Alexis? Stevie? Oh god_ ) is intolerable. He stuffs the CD into the pocket of his least-favorite jacket, in the room’s dustiest armoire, hoping that it never sees the light of day again. 

The thought comes creeping back later, as he drifts toward sleep in his single bed: what if Patrick was serious about the mix CD? David knows from experience that giving someone that type of emotional ammunition never ends well. It’s why he always attended Mariah Carey concerts by himself – or at least, only with people who were being paid for their discretion. But Patrick might be too naïve to know better. 

Even worse: if the CD is a genuine gift, Patrick will be expecting David to listen to it. He’ll probably ask him _whether he liked it._ Then David will be forced to perform sentimentality over somebody humming to a twangy guitar, and Patrick will see through it and break up with him immediately, even though it’s Patrick’s own fault for giving David such a tacky, off-base monthiversary present. 

David’s doubts keep him company late into the night. In the morning, Patrick kisses him hello and doesn’t mention the mix CD.

***

David mostly forgets about it for the next two months. When Patrick proposes hosting an open mic night at Rose Apothecary, the CD briefly fuels David’s fears about Patrick’s performance - until Patrick allays them in such a spectacular fashion that David thinks he might never be afraid again.

It hurts bitterly to be proven wrong. In the aftermath of the barbeque, Patrick’s every teasing gesture takes on a vindictive edge in David’s memory. He imagines tossing the CD into the wastebasket to molder amongst the tear-and-snot soaked tissues. But David can’t even get out of bed, much less leave the motel room to retrieve it from its hiding place. Instead, he rolls himself up in his sheets like a sailor about to be buried at sea, and tries to forget the past four months entirely. 

Strangely enough, an embarrassing musical interlude is what puts David and Patrick’s relationship back on track. In its wake, David finds himself relaxing his iron control of their soundtrack at the store and in the car. And Patrick takes advantage of the opportunity to introduce David to his music. 

David doesn’t develop an intrinsic appreciation for it, by any means. But he discovers that almost every song Patrick plays him has a story attached to it. (Patrick’s story-telling might also be a defense mechanism, since David has a tendency to talk over any music not his own.) 

Whatever the reason, “This song reminds me of turning sixteen,” Patrick will say, apropos of nothing. “My cousins and I built a driftwood fire on the river, and we slept out there under the stars.”

Or he’ll laugh and exclaim, “Oh man, this song was playing the first time I ever got drunk!” 

Or he’ll confess, “I performed this at my high school’s coffeehouse event. I was _terrified_ to sing in front of my English teacher.” 

Once, coming home from dinner in Elmdale, Patrick chokes out, “The night after my grandpa’s funeral… Rachel took me driving on the backroads outside town. The radio was turned down so low I could barely hear it, but. Yeah.” He swallows hard. “I’ll never forget this one.” 

David says softly, “I’m glad you had someone with you, who understood.” He takes his right hand off the steering wheel, and Patrick reaches out to grip it tight.

***

Over time, Patrick’s music grows on David after all. It’s part of him, like his button-up shirts and his baseball props, and David wants the complete package.

Not long after their engagement, Patrick brings up moving in together (for real this time). 

“I know my apartment is small,” he says diffidently, over ice cream at a nearly-cute retro diner in Elm Glen. “And it doesn’t have much closet space. But things are so hectic right now; I don’t think it’s a good time to start looking for a house. Maybe we could rent a storage unit…” Watching David’s face, he trails off and starts to smile.

“Um, yes, I think we can. Figure something out,” David breathes. Their feet touch under the table– David doesn’t know who moved first– and David accepts a bite of ice cream from Patrick’s spoon. Every time he thinks he couldn’t be happier, Patrick surprises him. 

David is so excited to live with Patrick full-time that he sets aside his wedding moodboards and makes himself a list of tasks to prepare. He’s in the love room working on task #3 – a ruthless wardrobe purge – when he feels something stiff inside the coat that he’s stuffing into a garbage bag. 

He pulls out the CD, and feels his cheeks crease in a grin. “Month Two!” is emblazoned across the front in blue bubble letters, surrounded by flowers and hearts. The precise little doodles are much more endearing now that he knows how bad Patrick is at drawing; he must have traced them. 

Brushing his thumb along the wobbly tail of a shooting star, David remembers how unsteady he felt back then. He was addicted to Patrick’s soft-eyed smiles, but terrified of the expectations that might lurk behind them. Any new information about Patrick seemed potentially destabilizing – the mix CD being a case in point. David couldn’t hide it away fast enough.

Now, David wants to listen to it immediately. Even if the track listing on the back cover is fake, and the first song is “My Funny Valentine;” even if it includes the grating, cynical music that Patrick favors on bad days, but usually keeps in his earbuds. David wants to figure out what Patrick was thinking when he made it. He knows so much about Patrick; he wants to know every last little thing.

So the next time David’s doing vendor pick-ups and Patrick is minding the store, David slides the mix CD into the Lincoln’s CD player. 

He’s surprised to find that he recognizes nearly all of the songs from some story or other of Patrick’s. It’s a little bit galling, if he’s honest. Knowing Patrick as well as he does now, he assumed that the songs would be about David. Patrick is the master of concealing a sincere gesture within a joke, after all. 

David pouts out at the cornfields for a while. The music plays on. It feels strange, listening to it without Patrick there. Here’s the song that Patrick hit a home run to; here’s the one that he played on repeat the summer before he started university, breathless with the anticipation of a fresh start. Patrick and his dad listened to this song while they built his Beaver Buggy – Patrick hammered his thumb and cried, but he took third place on racing day. (Clint spilled these additional tidbits when he and Marcy visited, over Patrick’s eyerolls.)

The stories are all out of chronological order. It’s an interesting way of piecing together Patrick’s past – like a remix of his most formative moments. He has a seemingly endless catalog of music, but David remembers that these particular tracks keep circling back around. They must be some of Patrick’s favorites. 

David dwells on the few unfamiliar songs, too – the ones that (he hopes) are about him. He plays them on a loop, savoring the singers’ warm voices and lingering over words like “honey,”… “darling,”… “love,” as the stereo exhales them. True, he can hear them from Patrick almost anytime. But Patrick isn’t here now, and David is so love-sick that he misses him even when they’re apart for a few hours. He hits “replay” again.

***

On pain of death, he’ll never admit to how many times he listens to the CD before Patrick discovers it. It’s a Monday, so the store is closed, and they’re meeting with a potential new vendor who makes brainteaser puzzles out of recycled materials. 

(“These look like miniature bondage equipment,” Patrick said, staring at the photos on the vendor’s website. 

“Yes – and they even match our aesthetic,” David said happily. 

In the end, they agreed that the solvability of the puzzles would be the deciding factor.) 

Patrick’s car is at Bob’s Garage, its A/C having given up the ghost after the hottest July on record. Ray kindly gives them a ride to the motel so they can avoid sweating through their clothes. He also squeezes an impressively-detailed pitch for his real estate services into the two-minute drive. David assumed that using Ray as their realtor would be a foregone conclusion, once they were ready to start house-hunting. Still, Ray’s excitement when Patrick tells him so is kind of sweet. 

David and Patrick pile into the Lincoln, Patrick taking the driver’s seat. Somehow, the turn of the key in the ignition kicks David’s memory into gear. He makes a panicked dive for the radio dial, but too late – Patrick wards him away, shielding it with his body and laughing his ass off. 

“What the hell were you listening to?” he asks. “Another erotic audiobook?”

“I refuse to feel shame about my erotica,” David grumbles. 

“All I’m asking is for you to keep your headphone jack firmly attached when we’re in public.” Patrick hits the Power button with a flourish. The fucking thing wasn’t even turned on. 

David wilts against the passenger door, overheated and resigned. Of course, the next song to play is from the middle of the CD. He squints ferociously into the side mirror through the opening notes, until he’s sure that no outsized emotions will burst onto his face. No need to add fuel to the fire. 

But when he risks a glance at Patrick, the look on _his_ face is–stunned, speechless, overwhelmed. 

“What – David, you – you kept this? You listened to it?”

“Of course I did,” David says, caught off-balance. “It was a gift!” 

“It was a joke,” Patrick counters. 

“Well, I... like your jokes,” he says weakly.

“You never said anything. I figured you must’ve thrown it away,” Patrick says. His cheeks are scarlet. “Especially after – you know.” 

David knows; he nearly did. He reaches out and turns off the music, and Patrick leans back into his seat. 

“I’ve been trying to figure them out,” David offers into the quiet car. “The songs you chose.” 

“Yeah?” Patrick’s eyes are fixed on the steering wheel now.

“Like... most of them are from when you were growing up. They’re special to you. But I didn’t know that at the time – and _you_ knew that we had wildly divergent musical tastes. Also, you never brought up the CD after you gave it to me. But then again,” David waves his hands wildly to illustrate his confusion, “there are a few Schitt’s Creek songs thrown in –”

“Schitt’s Creek songs?”

“Yes,” he says impatiently, “songs without a backstory. I figured from that, and from the, um, lyrics… that those might be about me? So really I have no idea what you were going for.”

Patrick turns to look at him again, his face incredulous. “All of the songs are about you. It’s a mix CD that I gave you for our anniversary.”

“No,” he protests. “No, because, see –” He fumbles in the glove compartment for the CD case and brandishes it at Patrick, jabbing his finger at each track name. “This one is about baseball, and this one is about how you felt when you climbed that tower thingy on Maple Mountain… and this one is about you and your mom seeing Bonnie Raitt together – which, what, it’s not even _by_ Bonnie Raitt –”

David trails off as Patrick’s expression changes. There’s a look he gets sometimes – like he’s looking right at David, entirely focused on him, and yet seeing something beyond him. Something infinitely rare and precious, that might vanish if he looks away. 

“David,” Patrick says. “Since the day we met, I haven’t heard one of these songs the same.”

“What. What do you mean?”

“I knew most of them before I came here. I’d even performed a lot of them. They were special to me, like you said. So when I started… falling for you, of course they came to mind.” David feels Patrick tug at the CD case; he lets it go, held fast by those deep brown eyes. “The lyrics would circle around in my head for hours. It was like I was hearing them for the first time. They’re all _love songs_ ,” he says, his voice as raw as his gaze. “And I – I used to love the melodies, the memories that came with them. I loved the feeling of the words resonating in my chest and my throat when I sang them. I loved how they flowed out of me and touched the people I was singing to. 

“But they never really touched me. Not until you did.”

Patrick swallows, and looks down at the plastic case clenched in his hands. 

David is too choked up to speak. Instead, he lays his palm on Patrick’s chest, rubbing slow circles over his heart. His eyes trace the faint waves in Patrick’s hair. There was a time before David knew they existed – when Patrick wore his hair too short to have any waves. When, apparently, Patrick was so overcome with yearning to be known that he burned his heart onto a compact disc and handed it to David, then never spoke of it again. And David left it in the dark, unheard. 

David feels tears running down his face and dripping off his chin. One of them lands on Patrick’s arm. He looks up at David with a tremulous smile. “Oh, sweetheart, I’m sorry,” he breathes, blotting gently at David’s cheeks with the cuffs of his shirt. “That was – way too much.”

David shakes his head, but croaks, “It’s too hot out to cry like this, Patrick.” 

Patrick blows a puff of air in his face. David swats at him feebly, even though it feels nice on his damp skin. 

“We’re supposed to be meeting a new vendor,” he adds, a bit stronger, “and we need to appear professional.”

“Right, and we’re almost – shit, _already_ running late,” Patrick amends after a glance at the clock. “Let’s go inside and get cleaned up, OK? I’ll call the vendor to let her know.”

“All right,” David says. 

But first, he takes Patrick’s face carefully in his hands and maneuvers him until he can press a kiss to those waves on top of his head. Patrick nudges his nose into David’s collarbone, and they just breathe for a little while. 

***

Thirty minutes later, they finally hit the road, after another hold-up when Alexis Facetimes Patrick. (She wants to introduce him to the oldest living tortoise in the Galapagos. Apparently it’s urgent because “the poor thing could just, like, keel over any day now!” David almost hangs up on her, but then Patrick gives the tortoise the same little wave that he gives his cousins’ toddlers when they videochat. And, well. David’s heart isn’t made of stone, okay?) 

David was planning to talk through their shortlist of potential wedding caterers during the drive. Instead, he’s distracted by the lingering ache in his chest. He can’t stop sneaking glances at Patrick, who is watching the road with an absent half-smile on his face. He seems perfectly fine; still, the ache persists.

“You and that turtle made quite the connection,” David tries.

Patrick huffs a laugh. “He was pretty cute for a tortoise,” he says. “And it was sweet, seeing Alexis so enthusiastic about it. I know that means a lot to Ted –” 

“I’m sorry,” David blurts out, unable to stand it anymore. 

“For what?” Patrick asks. He looks completely nonplussed.

David sucks in a breath. “You tried to tell me something important, back then. And I didn’t listen. I treated it like a big joke, because I couldn’t handle the possibility that you might be serious. I just wish…that things could’ve been different.” _That_ I _could’ve been different._

Patrick is shaking his head before David even finishes speaking. “We both took our time, and we were careful with each other. I could never, ever regret that,” he says firmly. His mouth quirks when he adds, “I knew giving you that CD wasn’t the smartest idea. But it helped me sort of... set aside what I couldn’t tell you yet.”

“You couldn’t tell me,” David repeats hollowly.

Patrick nudges his shoulder against David’s. “I’m telling you now – it wasn’t like that! It wasn’t sad. I was so happy, so in love, for the first time in my life. I wanted to share that feeling with you. I just needed more time to figure out how to tell you, so that you’d understand. So that you’d feel it, too.” He glances away from the road for a moment, and flashes David his sunniest grin. “And I did figure it out. Didn’t I?”

David remembers the warm weight of Patrick’s gaze as he sang to David like they were the only two people in the room. And before that – the truths that spilled out of Patrick in darkened cars and rented rooms and quiet moments at the store. David held those truths close and safe, while he learned how to give Patrick the same honesty. He wonders, sometimes, if he and Patrick have taught each other a whole new language.

“You did,” David realizes. “You found lots of ways to tell me, and I heard you.” He smiles back at Patrick. “I felt – what you meant for me to feel.”

“Me too,” Patrick says softly. David can tell that he means _before_ , and _always,_ but most of all, _right now._

David turns on the stereo, and Patrick’s hand finds his - his fingers caressing each gold ring - as they listen together.


End file.
